Islamist extremism: the menace many dare not speak by name

The rise of Jihad denialism

Late at night (in this country) on September 11, 2001, we were shocked by the horror unfolding in New York and sensed our civilisation was under attack.

It was, and still is.

For all the terror attacks that have followed — and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa — Western democracies have persistently tried to wish away the problem of Islamist extremism.

The populist line has been the one that downplays the threat — Merry Christmas war is over. Tragically this has been an illusion.

Unlike invading armies of the past from Germany and Japan, the war being waged against the western world by Islamist terrorists is insidious, inconsistent and often invisible. Then a plane flies out of the clear blue sky, a bomb explodes in a bar or a gunman takes to the streets.

The threat is difficult to grasp and because it is related to cultural divisions in our own immigrant societies it can be deeply uncomfortable to confront. So there is a temptation to avert our eyes and forestall action.

The trouble is that this threat also has a long and deep cultural foundation and its adherents are patient; so unless we tackle and disable its ideological wellspring, Islamist terrorism can hibernate and cultivate anywhere, including in our midst. And there can be no bargaining or negotiation — the Islamist aims cannot be satisfied except by subjugation, or death.

The idea is to impose the Muslim faith, Sharia law and the rule of a caliphate over all of us — no ifs, no buts. This extremism opposes choice, democracy, plurality and liberty.

We can always postpone facing this dilemma because it will not overwhelm us today or tomorrow.

When attacks don’t come, we often revert to complacency or denial. Julia Gillard said the 9/11 decade was over and various so-called progressives mocked the Coalition’s early talk of a resurgent security threat.

But Islamism’s historical roots (eloquently explained by Clive Kessler on page 20) should leave us in no doubt about the existential nature of the struggle.

This column has warned about the dangers of jihad denialism since long before the upsurge of Western terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic State’s success in Iraq and Syria.

Yet we need to grasp the evil genius of Islamic State — that simply by establishing a self-declared caliphate and sustaining it they have inspired Islamist extremists worldwide. This is why containment is no solution.

Yet in this country and more broadly across the Western world we remain reluctant to discuss the issue and confront the challenge — we see leaders, from Barack Obama down, constantly edit out of their discussions any reference to Islamism.

It is also common to hear the airing of grievances used by terrorists to motivate their followers or attack the West. We are given the impression that US foreign policy, or cartoonists’ drawings or so-called Islamophobia could be the root causes.

From Australia’s Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed to terrorist sympathiser Zaky Mallah, and from Green Left activists to international leaders, such statements disseminate fundamental misunderstandings and have the obscene effect of amplifying jihadist propaganda and providing justification for their deeds.

The best/worst example of this came from the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, when he spoke to US embassy staff after last month’s Black Friday terror atrocity in Paris. “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo,” Kerry said, “and I think everybody would feel that — there was a sort of particularised focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of, not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that — this Friday was absolutely indiscriminate.”

Slaughtering cartoonists was understandable — Kerry’s moral compass had been skewed by the terrorist’s propaganda. We might wonder what hope the free world has if the US Secretary of State doesn’t quite understand the nihilist motivation of Islamist extremism.

The bit of Sun Tzu’s Art of War most of us know and comprehend is that to fight a battle you need to know your enemy and yourself. Our greatest strengths are our plurality and liberty; and the Islamist enemy will do anything — even kill themselves — in order to undermine them.

Yet it seems to be our strengths and the enemy’s aims that the political class are most anxious to eliminate from the debate. If we trumpet the superiority of the liberal democratic model and defend its global pre-eminence, we are seen as neo-conservatives preaching cultural and commercial imperialism rather than affirming our hard-won civilisation. We are encouraged instead to apologise for our success.

And instead of learning more about Islamist extremism, its origins, aims, methods and the trauma it brings upon Muslim and non-Muslim communities, we are encouraged to avoid the “I” word and treat every terrorist attack as another trigger to embrace all Muslims. This is patronising and muddle-headed.

Let us compare it with how we deal with another serious issue confronting our society. In the wake of domestic violence incidents and killings we don’t urge people to embrace all men or stress that not all men should be made to wear the blame. We do quite the opposite. We now urge all men to be aware of this issue, talk about it and do what they can to both prevent it and provide refuge or protection for potential victims.

We have educational campaigns so all of us can deepen our knowledge; and they operate on the overt understanding that the virtuous majority can be conscripted to stamp out an evil perpetrated by a small minority.

It has long seemed obvious that we need to undertake a similar but much more complex and sensitive process regarding Islamist terrorism.

We need to deepen community comprehension of this persistent and absolutist ideology. We need to counter the propaganda that we are being punished for our misdeeds and explain its implacable aims and the antipathy it holds for our pluralist, secular and liberal values.

Muslim communities will already have a better grasp of the threat but any educational strategy must reach across Muslim and non-Muslim communities and build links and trust along with knowledge.

We know this deadly threat has created mayhem in the West for at least the past 15 years, while it has been influential in the Middle East for about 80 years and, as Kessler details, is a modern distortion based on centuries of cultural/civilisational struggle.

We know various Islamist extremist groups are wreaking havoc, from West Africa across North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and through to the Indonesian archipelago.

And we know many experts predict this challenge will be with us for many decades to come — at least.

So we need a much broader and deeper understanding of the motivations and methods, along with potential warning signs and means of intervention.

If similarly wrong and counterproductive public messages are coming from the Grand Mufti and the US Secretary of State, we clearly have some work to do.